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Even as a child, when my grandparents would shuttle me around tourist destinations, I felt overwhelmed. Days spent in coach buses, hours spent in lines. 3 AM mornings in petrol stations, brusing my teeth and washing the sleep out of my eyes (and how can I forget the French Toilettes aka ‘squatting piss holes’

But the things I remember most are not the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, or climbing the eiffel tower, or seeing the Roman colosseum, but the sense of adventure all these things lacked. Sure, with my childhood imagination I would fantasize the histories behind these landmarks, or weave narratives of the people who built/painted/sculpted/made/lived in the things I saw, but much of my international travels as a child were very planned, calculated, itinerarized. Without spontaneity.

In essence, perhaps it was perfect for a child, to be told what to do, where to go, what to see….however, there were just as many times where I had wished we spent the afternoon eating in bistros, munching on rich food, watching the Dutch ride by on their bicycles, or wandering into shops (that sentiment probably facilitated by my childhood greed for ‘things’ and ‘presents’), spending the day picnicing on the green grass that surrounds the Basilique du Sacre Coeur de Montmatre, or wandering into alleys and stumbling into places that aren’t in some tourist guidebook. My grandparents and I also travelled in a bubble, we never really interacted with anyone else aside from our fellow travellers that shared the same language or country, and I found that sad, that even after experiencing different culture and histories, we were only left with momentos, photographs and video recordings, rather than deep, long lasting sacred memories and friendships.

After all that running around, this time, I want to travel…slower, give myself time to actually enjoy the scenes.

I want to travel more radically, where I go out of my way to interact with native Frenchies, Icelanders, WHATEVER! When I hitch-hiked to California, I lived out of a backpack and relied on my own wits, resourcefullness and the kindness of strangers, and surprisingly, it went really fucking well. And there was no rush, I could spend however much time I wanted anywhere, I didnt have to pay for anything because I didn’t feel like it, there was no schedule to follow and it felt revolutionary and liberating.

When the idea of our European jaunt began just to manifest in Mike’s brain, I had stumbled on this passage in the book Expect Resistance, A Crime think manual to radical and alternative living. It expressed many ideas that I had been gestating in my mind cogs over the years about travel, especially about how the rich travel and I found many correlations between my childhood travels and manifesto written in this book.

So I’m awfully excited for Iceland to possibly be the starting point of our adventure. I’ve been pretty fixated on the enigma that is Bjork for as long as I can remember , and equally as fascinated by the land mass that inspires her music. She always made Iceland seem like a wildly living organism, fissuring, exploding, bubbling, screaming with life (kinda like her music huh!) And this isn’t surprising considering that Iceland is a pretty young little land mass in comparison to the rest of the continents that make up the globe. I remember reading an interview where Bjork spoke of her childhood and on her walks to school she’d belt out songs with vigour while nobody watched, or crouch down to little rivers and whisper lullabies. If i did that on the regular into the street cracks in Toronto, I’d be committed, BUT IN ICELAND IT’S COMEPLETELY NATURAL.

Also, my visions of my marriage as a little girl involved a cliff in Iceland, Bjork wearing a beard as she conducted the ceremony, and a white yak as our only witness. HINT HINT MIKE. Just kidding, marriage is stupid.

MOVING ON.

Mike and I spent the latter part of my reading week and his time off from work brainstorming what we’d like to do in MIceland. After an episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain for inspiration, we knew we would absolutely had try ROTTEN SHARK FIN, and GELATINIZED SHEEP BALLS first thing upon arrival. We’re going to do it I swear.

So far, the plan is to land in Rekjavik and participate in the runtur (aka, get drunk with the locals on their weekend jaunt through the pub district). That will be followed with a dip in the Blue Lagoon to nurse our possible/non-existent hangovers.

BAD ASSNESS...SINCE TIME.

We’re hoping to check out Northern Iceland as well, and will probably take a domestic flight to Myvatn for our NATURE BATH WITH BONUS STEAMY FISSURE ACTION

Anna and I have decided that we would like to make a plan to backpack across Europe for three months. Understandably, this will take quite a bit of time to plan and finance, but fuck it. Better late than never, and god knows, I constantly feel as if I’m on borrowed time.

At this point, I can’t really speak for Anna, but I don’t feel all that knowledgable when it comes to travelling. Suffice it to say, I don’t have much experience, and I’m clearly too lazy to do all the research myself. That’s where you guys come in. Anyone that has done any travelling/backpacking/hostelling etc. Or for friends or relatives living in Europe, any aide would be greatly appreciated.

As of now, we are planning to visit Iceland, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and The United Kingdom. Obviously we would kind of enjoy the spontanaiety of just going wherever we please, and will definitely keep it in mind, but wanted these particular seven countries to be in focus. As this blog progresses, we’ll be getting a little more in depth about where we’re going and what we’re doing, so anyone following will have more specific things to comment on (And not just penis jokes from my friends).

In any event, I’ll try to keep the introductory entry brief, but I’m looking forward to some input, cause frankly, I don’t have a fucking clue. I’m not sure if you guys can subscribe to this, as I’m new on the blog thing as well, but we’ll post as often as we can, and once we get all the details sorted and actually put this plan into action, we will be updating with photos/videos/tour logs for your enjoyment/patronage.